Thinking lots about @MadeleineLEngle's "time series," born of her Cold War anxieties. "I look at the children, the budding trees, the sky, the tiny purple violets," she wrote in her journal in spring of 1959... (1/6)
(cont.) "And I think: how can anyone wantonly contemplate destroying all this?"Nuclear annihilation permeated her dreams: "Last night I dreamed that I had written a letter to Eisenhower with the solution to the Berlin problem, to all international problems... (2/6) 
(cont.) "It was simple. Just to issue a proclamation of our own, saying that under no circumstances would we drop a nuclear bomb of our own. If a war is started by someone dropping a bomb it will be Russia, not America, who will do it. And we will not retaliate. (3/6)
(cont.) "We will have nothing whatsoever to do with nuclear warfare. Russia wants to be the saviour of the eastern world. How, under these circumstances, could she start a war without completely losing face? They would all immediately come over to the west." (4/6)
She never wrote that letter to Eisenhower. Instead, she began drafting A WRINKLE IN TIME, her portrait of confronting evil and defeating darkness. “This is my psalm of praise to life," she wrote when the manuscript was finished: "my stand for life against death." (5/6)
(posted with permission) (6/6)
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